[ubuntu-uk] Partitioning Question

[alan c]

On 10/03/12 14:32, Nigel Verity wrote:
> Hi
> A
> bit of advice on partitioning, please.
> 
> I
> currently dual-boot Xubuntu and Windows 7. I've now got to the happy
> situation where I no longer need any Windows applications.
> Consequently I'd like to delete Windows and reclaim the 80 Gb of disk
> space it takes up. Would I be better off simply clearing down the
> whole machine and re-installing Xubuntu from scratch, or is it safe
> to mess about with the partitions using a tool like GParted. If the
> latter, perhaps somebody knows of a good idiot's guide, as I've had a
> few problems in the past resizing partitions.

By far the safest thing, if you have to edit partitions at all (back
up first anyway), is to leave the empty windows partition in place,
but greatly resize it smaller, say to 1GB whatever. Then resize the
ubuntu larger to fill the gap. A conventional ubuntu dual boot install
 would have also created an extended partition to enable use of
logical partitions so the ubuntu will often be in /dev/sda5 whatever.

If this is in your case too, then an intermediate action would be to
resize the extended partition before expanding the ubuntu partition.

If I am correct here (?)
The advantage of all this would be that the MBR will likely point to
the original Ubuntu partition name (sda5?)

If you delete a partition entirely it is possible (?) that  the clunky
partition system will rename partitions on the fly and ubuntu will not
boot without a reinstall of GRUB.

good luck

-- 
alan cocks